We are given a favorable but completely unfamiliar environment, as well as a company of androids—universal interfaces for transforming this environment. The working conditions of the android exclude its conversion into private property. And so, behold—Ancap-chan becomes a communist!
Features of Android Husbandry
A. Synergy. Non-linear growth of productivity resulting from an increase in the number of androids involved in a task; there is a significant positive economy of scale. Therefore, the constant privatization of androids one by one to serve families or individuals is inefficient.
B. Unsuitability for zero-sum games. Any attempt to requisition an android for tasks that do not benefit others is suppressed with incredible ease. Insisting that an android perform a strictly individual assignment is incredibly difficult. Therefore, the most advantageous evolutionarily stable strategy is to employ androids primarily for the benefit of the largest possible collectives.
C. Uncertainty of the future. According to the terms of the problem, the end date of the experiment is unknown. It is also unknown how complex the production of new androids will be. Therefore, one should proceed from the pessimistic assumption that the growth of the human population will occur faster than the growth of the android population for a considerable amount of time.
Now I will formulate the strategy.
Our goal is the maximum prosperity of the community in the longest possible perspective.
Until it is possible to ensure that the growth of the android population exceeds the increase in the number of people, we should reduce our dependence on androids by developing production chains that do not include androids.
Priority is given to tasks that bring immediate benefit to the maximum number of community members. That is, instead of tasks like “bring me some tea,” preference is given to tasks like “construct a time-cost function for planting a tea plantation for the entire human community based on the number of androids involved in the task; now you three go and plant it.”
Since androids are de facto slaves in public use, the social structure to be adapted as a self-governance mechanism should be one that implies the mass use of public slaves. For example, Lacedaemon, better known as Sparta. That is, decisions on the plans for using androids for public tasks are prepared by a “gerousia”—these do not necessarily have to be biological elders, but some elected body of experts in such optimization tasks. And the decisions are approved by the “apella,” that is, a general assembly.
An obvious solution for the initial setup phase: 5.1. Each family receives an android for family setup tasks during the daytime and has the right to use synergistic effects by cooperating with neighbors. 5.2. A small surplus of androids (at the start there are slightly more than there are families) is immediately assigned to public tasks according to the scheme “gerousia outlines the plan, apella approves.” 5.3. During the nighttime, all family androids must be sent to public works with instructions to return by morning.
As the community grows and becomes more complex, the initial mechanism will inevitably be revised. Questions regarding revision should be raised after a change in the number of families, the end of the primary setup phase (everyone already has a house, a garden, and a sports ground, and androids gradually begin to be recruited for tasks like “scratch my heel”), at the moment of a predicted sharp change in the load on the android fund (start or end of major projects), or at the moment of a change in the number of androids (they begin to fail or, conversely, a production line is launched).
The appearance of a group with radically different views than the majority on the disposal of androids should lead to a proposal to settle further away, taking androids with them proportional to the size of the group. Otherwise, the damage from management collisions will paralyze the plans of both the majority and the minority.
The Strugatsky brothers were Soviet sci-fi writers who, due to the distortions typical of a planned economy, were published by the Soviet state in much smaller print runs than the actual demand. Consequently, during the transition to a market economy, this deferred demand began to be actively satisfied, and my parents had a complete collection of their works on their shelf. I assume that the current generation of fifty-year-olds knows these books much better than those who are now twenty-five. As for me, I somehow jumped straight from childhood history encyclopedias to fantasy, then to popular science, while the Strugatskys’ collected works just gathered dust on my parents’ shelf.
Actually, I was prompted to write this post by a mention from Mikhail Svetov in a stream about how, as a child, he read authors in their entire collected works. I am not that tedious, and in the case of the Strugatskys, I ended up reading three books at different times.
The first was “Hard to Be a God”, a story about a communist “popadanets” (time-traveler/portal-jumper) in the Middle Ages. It was impossible not to read it because it is memetic, and I wanted to understand the origins of all those tales about how the “greys” are replaced by the “blacks,” and why a noble don should not see the reasons for not doing something. At the time, there was no mass literature about “popadantsy,” so the writers used another planet as a setting, but all the problematic themes perfectly align with the popadanets genre. What gives the work its originality is that the traveler failed miserably at imposing his values on a medieval society, and the mission ended in failure. Modern writers churn out more optimistic things, but here they managed to make a bestseller without a happy end; I respect that.
The second turned out to be the novella “The Predators”; here I owe thanks to Alexander Rozov, who wrote an interesting review of it. The book is about a communist who ends up in a prosperous capitalist consumer society, is horrified, and begins to make plans about what can be done with these unfortunate lost people who want to live happily and do not want to storm Mars in tight ranks. The communists faced a dilemma: either bring assault columns into the country and drive the population into the gulag, or start a multi-year brainwashing campaign. The protagonist humanely adhered to the second strategy, considering the first a failure, and for that, we can be grateful.
Finally, the third novella is “The Distant Rainbow”, which I read quite recently at the dacha when I had a free evening—a book from that very collected works happened to be next to my chair. The story tells of a planetary catastrophe that occurred due to the peculiarities of the communist system of organizing fundamental research, as well as the fact that in a planned economy there are no prices, and therefore economic calculation is impossible. The latter is illustrated with rich material. Rare instruments were brought from the metropolis, and the scientists resort to various tricks to try to obtain them out of turn, through connections (“blat”), or simply by stealing them. The option to “buy” simply does not exist for the poor souls. Energy is needed for experiments, and the scientists steal it from the local power system because the energy issued by coupons has already been spent. The option to “buy” simply does not exist for the poor souls. Another experiment ends in catastrophe (I don’t rule out that it was also caused by a competing laboratory stealing some rare controller right from the test rig, but the reasons for the tragedy remain off-screen), and it turns out that no evacuation means were provided on the planet (what safety regulations, it’s communism). To top it all off, the question of who exactly and what values should be saved first is also solved completely arbitrarily, and not by a legitimate governing body, but by the captain of the only spaceship, who decided for himself who lives and who dies, as if the ship were his private property. And it is exactly this approach, where the “Red Director” is king and god at his enterprise, that is positioned as the most morally justified. And so, back in the distant sixties, the sci-fi writers were already describing the outlines of the “Red Belt” of the nineties.
I once had to answer a question about which books are worth reading. I suggested first ensuring a frame of perception for oneself, and then you can read anything, and the result will invariably please you. Here you go: a libertarian reading of communist propaganda. Try reading all sorts of things; it’s interesting. And yes, the Strugatskys are stylistically simply wonderful, and I perfectly understand the nature of their popularity. If I have more time, I’ll read something else by them.
Is this some kind of flirting with the post-Soviet audience? You trash Nietzsche, yet your leader (one of them) — Mikhail Svetov — is essentially a Nietzschean. My father read this and declared that you are accomplices of the Rothschilds on Earth. Now I don’t know how to win him over to my side. And yes, your leader said that “libertarianism is an ideology without a cultural agenda.” But judging by your answers, there is a cultural agenda after all, and it is not very appealing to certain layers of society. You want Communists to have “Paradise on Earth,” therefore they are your allies. And my communist father is a wonderful person. So, everyone on the right goes into the trash, then? Why don’t you understand that we are your allies in the fight against Euro-Bolshevism and the cultural-Marxist tolerast oppression? Or are we just extremist psychos in your eyes, unworthy of life? Let me remind you: about 100 million people became victims of communism in the 20th century. And you’re groveling before them?
As it happens, I oppose quite a few of Mikhail Svetov’s theses, but there is one thesis that he formulated very precisely and concisely, and I have no complaints about it: “the end does not justify the means.” Communists will be allies exactly to the extent that they are willing to use correct means. It is the methods of the communists that are the subject of discussion, while they can set whatever goals they want — as long as voluntariness is respected, there are no complaints against them. They can even revere Stalin and Che Guevara for their visual images, and as long as they are not plotting mass repressions, let them smoke pipes or cigars for their health and grow mustaches of any lushness. They can even claim that the cruelty of these historical figures was forced because the times were such, but that is already a warning bell: if they dare to mention that times are hard now as well, and for the sake of class interests it would be worth deviating from the principles of justice, that is already a reason to put them in the crosshairs.
Similarly, I have no complaints about the ideas of national socialists to free themselves from the power of Jewish capital and develop national production and culture, as long as this is done on a voluntary basis. Do not buy finished products from Jews, but buy their businesses from them. If the majority of representatives of your nation adhere to this tactic, it will lead to the business becoming national, and no Kristallnacht will be required, let alone gas vans — you will be respectable fellows, honoring the interests of your group no worse than the notorious Jews. At the same time, you can voluntarily chip in for the benefit of low-income representatives of your nation to justify the proud name of socialists. You can joke about the Jews burned by Hitler if you aren’t disgusted yourselves, but if talk begins that it wouldn’t be bad to repeat it, that will be a reason to put you in the crosshairs as well.
The foundation of communist ideology lies in the same values of justice, equality, rejection of slavery, and the pursuit of cooperation between people as the foundation of libertarian ideology. Therefore, there is nothing terrible about someone being inspired by these wonderful ideas.
The difference between communists and libertarians is that communists do not believe in people. They believe that, left to their own devices, people will be unable to establish orders that lead them to prosperity, therefore communists must lead them and bring them to victory through armed struggle. Meanwhile, the soft-hearted libertarians, conversely, are filled with a strange, irrational confidence in the benefit of spontaneous orders established in the course of natural human activity; they say that the market will put everything in its place, that aggressive violence is unprofitable in the long run, and that the institutions practicing it are becoming obsolete.
Communists talk a lot about how desirable the nationalization of the means of production is, but when you show them someone like Sechin, it immediately turns out that such nationalization does not suit them. They usually prefer a situation where the enterprise is managed by those who work there. And this is already a normal, understandable starting position for a calm dialogue about the economic efficiency of various enterprise management models, and their compatibility and stability.
Communists talk a lot about the fight against exploitation, and libertarians about how taxes are theft. Nothing prevents us, in communicating with communists, from stating that taxes are exploitation. In doing so, we would not be sinning against the truth; we would simply be translating our thesis into a language understandable to them. Their ideal is a classless society. Our ideal is a stateless society. From the perspective of communists, the state is a tool by which the ruling class oppresses the others. I would say that this is a similarity to the point of confusion.
Therefore, one should not laugh at communists, or reject the entire complex of their ideas outright from the start. It makes sense to debate with them about the permissible means of achieving the goal. Does the love for investing full power in a charismatic leader contribute to the achievement of equality? Can the habit of seizing property from people without clear and unambiguously interpreted criteria as to why this is being done lead to civil peace? Can a classless society be achieved by appointing a hegemonic class? At what point does beneficial cooperation become harmful exploitation, and can the identification of this boundary be entrusted to the exploited themselves?
So, having a communist father is, generally speaking, not a bad thing. It means you always have an excellent topic for conversation. Practice on him; it will be useful in life. And within the family, communism is indeed in most cases the optimal system, so things are probably quite good in your family with a communist father. Well, or your father is an incorrect communist, which is also not surprising—the world is generally full of incorrect communists. It is these incorrect communists who create incorrect communist regimes, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela, but someday they will surely succeed if they start using the correct methods. You know, things like respect for human dignity, for property acquired through honest labor, for freedom of contract, and many other things dear to the heart of every true communist.
Everything looks quite smooth in the USA, but conditions are different in the former USSR. Often, loss-making state enterprises, mono-towns, an economy tied to the military-industrial complex, and micro-district housing developments hinder individualism and state non-interference — eliminating or minimizing the state and closing loss-making enterprises in a short timeframe would lead to unemployment and the demise of all public sector workers, while the survivors would hang the reformers, disregarding the NAP. Does Russia have a chance for successful libertarian reforms?
анонимный вопрос
Answer by Alex Murin
And why rush? Ancap and libertarianism are an ideology. If people share it, they will be guided by it. If they don’t, they won’t. You cannot force people to live without a state. These are free people; they decide for themselves how to live. It is only in mono-towns and at loss-making state enterprises that people more quickly come to the realization that the government is not their friend. Instead of shops with beautiful displays, kiosks with cheap beer begin to appear; instead of excise vodka, people switch to moonshine. Instead of saying “I am an honest taxpayer,” people prefer to hide their income and conduct cash transactions without documentation.
High-rise development, where neighbors do not know each other and the concept of “one’s own” ends at the apartment threshold, is a serious problem for a free society. Until people become owners of their land and understand that their home is a fortress belonging only to them, it is difficult to speak of freedom and self-government. But we have another factor playing in our favor — poverty. A person who has nothing to lose is more likely to stop supporting the one who robs them year after year than a person who has their own house or firm, who is not ashamed to say “my grandfather and father voted for the Republicans, and I support them too.” There are many paths to a free society; we chose the path through poverty and extreme social inequality. And I would not want to specify deadlines; I would rather indicate the direction.
Addition by Ancap-tyan
During the collapse of the state, we should all take an example from Venezuela. While official propaganda there glorified the victories of the socialist economy and inflation hit record highs, people invested in what was beyond the state’s control — in bitcoin. The volume of bolivar transactions on the localbitcoins service noticeably exceeds, for example, the volume of euro transactions. However, Russians do not particularly need my advice, as the volume of ruble transactions on localbitcoins also exceeds the volume of euro transactions. So, even when the state demonstrates extreme inefficiency, it is by no means necessary to lose everything because of it. When a chance arises to change something in the country, it is better to have resources than not to have them.
Of course, bitcoin is not the only possible investment beyond the state’s control. Even more important are investments in horizontal ties. You may not be a civil society if you believe that political methods are currently ineffective, or if you despise political methods as such. But as atomized loners, you will not survive without the state. Therefore, the well-known communist slogan calling for the unification of the world proletariat should also be taken into account and creatively reworked for yourself, simply by removing the restrictions on the class composition of your community.
Finally, if for some reason you are a public sector worker receiving pennies for meaningless and ineffective work for the state, it would be foolish to discourage you from this job — you would have left it long ago yourself if you could. But you should not obsess over it. They say that in the late Soviet Union, which consisted of public sector workers just a bit more than entirely, terms absent from socialist political economy, such as “shabashka,” “kalym,” and other names for counter-economic phenomena, enjoyed extraordinary popularity. And so it is now — a good leftist under socialism strengthens not the marriage, but the personal budget. You can receive a salary from the state, but it is better to spend your main efforts on side jobs.
I don’t remember if I have provided definitions before, but they are indispensable.
Capitalism is a social system in which the dominant relations between people are commodity-money relations.
And, while I’m at it, I’ll define a few more imaginary entities.
Feudalism is a social system in which the dominant relations between people are personal mutual obligations.
Despotism is a social system in which the dominant relations between people are relations of direct violent coercion.
And, of course, we can’t forget: communism is a social system in which the dominant relations between people are relations of gifting.
Accordingly, criticisms of one system or another are based on its essence. Capitalism is criticized because under it everything is for sale and everything can be bought. Feudalism — because loyalty is more important than competence. Despotism — for terribly low labor productivity and enormous management costs. Communism — for the free-rider problem.
Therefore, to eliminate the objective shortcomings of capitalism, where it is more convenient for people, they easily borrow elements of other human formations. Do we have a closed economy and an unfriendly external environment? We borrow elements of feudalism. My property has been damaged, the responsible party has been identified, but they refuse to pay? Despotism is just what the doctor ordered. Do we have a family? Welcome to communism.
The main thing to remember is that all these social formations are simply conceptual constructs, while in reality there are many unique individual contacts between people, in each of which every participant pursues their own goals and uses their own means.
Uncle Scrooge is not only Scrooge, but also “uncle”
A similar question was asked of me three years ago, and at that time I wrote a whole essay on the subject titled “Why Altai Succeeded.” Now, without overthinking it, I am simply publishing it with minimal edits.
Why Altai Succeeded
The Gorno-Altai Autonomous Region is a small, sparsely populated peripheral territory of Southern Siberia on the border with Mongolia. There are no railways, almost no industry; there are mineral resources, but they are expensive to export due to a lack of infrastructure. It is inhabited predominantly by livestock breeders who are united into kolkhozes purely formally. It possesses significant tourism potential, which was practically unused by the socialist planned economy.
In the summer of 1990, talk of sovereignty began in the autonomous region. The leadership planned to demand a status upgrade to an autonomous republic, but instead, announcements began to appear—first in Gorno-Altaysk and Mayma, a few days later in all other district centers, and then everywhere. They hung on poles, on the doors of shops, post offices, and savings banks, or were simply pasted onto gates. The first print run was produced at the regional newspaper’s printing house, and thereafter it became a grassroots effort: some used typewriters, some wrote by hand. The text was as follows:
Comrades!
The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Comrade N.S. Khrushchev, promised Soviet citizens the construction of communism by 1980. Unfortunately, he was removed from office by a handful of party officials who preferred to develop the socialist system instead of building communism. But the laws of dialectical materialism cannot be cheated! And so, ten years after the promised deadline, Altai has finally built communism.
According to the teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin, the state is an instrument of class oppression. A communist society is classless; therefore, the state on the territory of Altai has henceforth naturally ceased to exist. The Communist Party, which served as the vanguard of the builders of communism, no longer persists as a structure separate from the rest of the people upon the achievement of communism. The task of the Communist Party is accomplished!
The basic principle of communism is: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Therefore, the inhabitants of communist Altai shall henceforth freely exchange any goods and services, valuing them only and exclusively according to their own needs. The amount of labor invested, which served as the socialist measure of a commodity’s value, is now disregarded. Concepts of added value, price zones, central planning, and the like are henceforth considered obsolete and possessing only historical value. Since states that use money as a measure of value still exist in the rest of the world, the inhabitants of Altai may also freely use the currencies of any states in their settlements according to their own needs, alongside any other values.
In their relations with one another, the inhabitants of Altai shall henceforth be guided by only two principles: mutual respect and communist consciousness. The first means that in their actions, residents take into account the interests of their neighbors and other involved parties, cementing their decisions with agreements. The second means that residents consider not only immediate needs but also care about what they will leave behind for their grateful descendants.
All conflicts are settled amicably by the residents involved in the conflict, according to the principles of mutual respect and communist consciousness. They may also turn to any other persons or organizations for judgment, pledging to carry out the decision rendered by them.
All property remaining to the inhabitants of Altai from the times of the socialist system, both personal and state-owned, continues to remain under the management of the same persons who managed it under socialism. Mechanisms for changing the managing persons are developed by the residents independently for each specific case, based on the principles of mutual respect and communist consciousness.
In relations with citizens of other states, the inhabitants of Altai are guided by the same principles as in their relations with each other. Any person is free to come to Altai for recreation, for settlement, or to engage in various activities. As long as they observe our principles, they are our welcome guest.
The inhabitants of Altai consider wars to be a remnant of a bleak past; therefore, they respect the borders of states and have no intention of seizing their territory by force. When traveling outside Altai, the inhabitants of Altai are guided not only by the principles of mutual respect and communist consciousness but also comply with the other requirements of those states.
The inhabitants of Altai will not tolerate attempts to turn history backward; therefore, they will oppose any attempts to revive a class society and a state on the territory of Altai. A sign of a class society is the distinction of any groups for whom different rules apply than for others. Signs of a state are: the forced seizure of valuables, the coercion of people to work, the restriction of freedom of action, and other violent actions carried out otherwise than as compensation for specific calculated damage.
It is clear that the stated principles differed greatly from the trends of recent years, and scholars of Marx’s works might find many of the introduced definitions quite debatable. But, first, the main, well-known communist principles were explicitly stated in this manifesto. Second, anyone who had read science fiction could easily recognize the bright communist future in these principles, and nothing else. But the most important psychological factor was that the manifesto declared victory. While the rest of the USSR was contemplating admitting defeat in the competition with capitalism, and reading “Dunno on the Moon”—where it was assumed that man is a wolf to man—as a visual aid for building a new order, the majority in Altai understood perfectly well what kind of system they had established and how to behave within it.
According to the manifesto, all functionaries of the national economy fully retained their positions; only party workers were left completely without roles. Attempts to assert their rights led to them being reminded: “You bitches removed Khrushchev!”. And, frankly speaking, the CPSU aktiv was not that large in a territory with a population of fewer than two hundred thousand. In any case, some party workers left for Russia; no one placed obstacles in their way.
Russia took a pause; the union leadership found itself in a predicament. Had this been a matter of militant nationalism, with the oppression of Russians and other excesses, they might have considered deploying troops. But to forcibly return those who had already moved to a new stage of development back to socialism? That would mean the collapse of the entire ideology. Keeping such a thing secret would have been impossible; glasnost had long been triumphantly sweeping across the USSR. It ended with Gorbachev officially announcing in October 1990 that an experiment on the transition to communism within a single region had begun on the territory of the Gorno-Altai Autonomous Region.
Already the following year, as everything in the USSR began to shake and the first foreign investors arrived in Altai—several hotel chains and one agro-industrial holding—a mass exodus of Soviet cooperators, currency traders, and other sufficiently wealthy citizens to Altai began. They discovered that both they, their money, and their initiative were welcome here.
At first, Soviet rubles were mainly used in Altai, then they predominantly switched to the US dollar and the Swiss franc. No one saw the need to conduct their own currency policy.
The few asphalted roads did not have time to fall into complete neglect during the transition period. Road services initially scraped by on small orders for asphalt paving inside villages or repairing bridges over mountain rivers, but gradually larger investors stepped in, and orders became overwhelming. In 1991, road workers set up a post at the entrance from Russia and began charging transport traveling to Mongolia. This was enough to maintain the Chuysky Trakt in a satisfactory condition. Gradually, a sufficient number of services emerged, each grabbing various road sections for maintenance and profit. Over time, the fee-collection mechanisms evolved toward greater user convenience—as is customary, in accordance with the principles of communist consciousness and mutual respect. Also, strangely enough, the total absence of any bodies designed to establish traffic rules and monitor their compliance did not particularly affect the accident rate.
Small aviation continued to operate between district centers, as well as to Biysk and Barnaul. By the time small aviation in Russia began to wither away, the Japanese had already started building an international airport in Gorno-Altaysk.
Private clinics first began to appear at hotels and sanatoriums; over time, solvent demand emerged in district centers as well. The rescue service began moonlighting by transporting patients from remote villages to district hospitals. In some cases, these were one-off orders, in others, subscription service agreements with residents, and in some, insurance companies managed to hustle in.
The level of education naturally dipped at first. Former school teachers worked with individual students on specific subjects, spending the rest of their time in their own gardens. Gradually, it became clearer what kind of specialists the communist economy needed, and the process began; in some places, it remained at the level of tutoring, while in Gorno-Altaysk and Ulagan, one secondary school each opened. Mainly, teachers gathered mixed-age groups and gave an intensive course of one or two subjects over a couple of months. The academic load remained laughable compared to the Soviet past, so children were more involved in household chores and found a full source of income quite early. On the other hand, it became common to voluntarily study specific areas of knowledge at a more mature age, when a person knew exactly what they needed and was ready to pay for it.
In the early nineties, excesses occurred when gangs from Russia arrived in jeeps, stealing cars, household appliances, and money. These issues were resolved in different ways. One could obtain contacts for a rival gang and lead them to the gang returning with the loot. One could organize armed resistance, as there were no restrictions on carrying weapons in Altai. One could provide leads to the Russian cops. In Mayma, which naturally suffered from raids more than others, a private security organization existed for a time—it was founded by Biysk gangsters who had been pushed out of the station market by competitors. Gradually, the opinion formed in the criminal circles of the Altai Krai that it was “beneath them” to act lawlessly toward the communists. They went there for cultured recreation, and sometimes for arbitration—the communist consciousness of their southern neighbors could be trusted.
In ninety-eight, Belokurikha joined communist (the de facto anarcho-capitalist system thus retained its original ideologized name de jure) Altai. In the RF, there was a default, a carousel of changing prime ministers, salary delays—while Altai investors offered good money in hard currency for the state property in the purchased Belokurikha. In the early two-thousands, the RF unilaterally carried out the demarcation of the border, established customs checkpoints and other strange attributes that states love so much. In 2014, Zhirinovsky suggested considering that Belokurikha and Northern Kazakhstan, along with Novorossiya, are ancestral Russian lands, but Zyuganov pulled him back, telling him not to dare sharpen his teeth on communists, and that in general, we could actually learn something from our southern neighbors rather than intruding upon them with our volunteers.
In 2006, there was an attempt to officially register the state of the Communist Republic of Altai—with the goal of joining the UN, WTO, and providing offshore services. However, the next day, the applicant’s entire fence was plastered with the communist manifesto, and he, after sober reflection, decided that things were fine as they were. He did not attempt to prove to his neighbors that his idea implied neither taxation nor other signs of a state mentioned in the manifesto, and he dropped his initiative. This communist inflexibility of the Altai people meant that no international company could keep its headquarters in Altai, as it was required to have a state registration, but this did not hinder real operational activity.
For trips around the world, the inhabitants of Altai initially used primarily Russian passports, which they obtained in Russian Biysk, but after the 2008 Georgian war, citizenship of the Baltic states and Israel became fashionable, and from 2010, Mongolia introduced a simplified procedure for the inhabitants of Altai, thereby fully satisfying the market demand.
Altai became a refuge for Edward Snowden, but this was not his most successful idea. NSA representatives, not hiding themselves particularly, flew to Gorno-Altaysk and captured the fugitive sysadmin, after which they departed for the RF and then to Washington. The Altai people did not obstruct the detention, but, first, they began to refuse US dollars en masse, gradually switching to Swiss francs for cash and bitcoins for cashless settlements, and second, in 2014, a veterans’ club opened near Onguday—something like a base for free mercenaries from all over the world—and when in 2017 the Russian FSB tried to capture Arkady Babchenko, who had fled to Altai, its employees were met with a rather unkind reception. However, it was managed without casualties or international scandals.
In 2020, the Manifiesto Comunista spread to Cuba, but that is a completely different story…
Our helicopter, fly ahead, the stop is at the commune!
